Years ago, before drifting away and then returning to the faith, I felt called to religious life and attended several vocation discernment retreat weekends. Overall, these were very good experiences and I don’t have any horror stories that could make the next Michael S. Rose book. The closest was at a retreat at a Franciscan community, where a man on the retreat spent the whole time talking as if he were some enlightened person who knows better than the Church and would single handedly bring the Church into the next century. The retreat house had a Brady Bunch setup – 2 adjoining rooms had a bathroom in between them so the 2 people in those rooms shared the one bathroom. The enlightened guy was my neighbor and knocked on the door and came into my room in his underwear and proceeded to talk about his friend who was gay and going into the seminary. I talked with him for a short time, kind of yessing him to death, which is my way of ignoring someone, and then went to bed with the door locked. Later the vocation director sent me all kinds of literature explaining work against land mines, human rights in Eastern Europe, etc.. All good and worthy stuff but I could get involved with that as a layman.

Another experience also included another Franciscan community-I liked Franciscan spirituality but learned my vocation was not franciscan. I don’t like animals and I don’t enjoy the idea of complete poverty, I think a community should have money just not the individual. Anyway, this community included a brother who proceeded to get drunk and moan about the good old days. I felt sorry for him, he was a good man but obviously when he joined a community he wanted to live in community. Once the 70’s came, each brother went off to do their own thing, so they did not even get together for Easter. I felt so sorry for him because I knew he was right, community means community. A couple of the brothers lived by themselves and did their own apostolate which does not make sense for Franciscans, who should be big on community.

One vocation director in a non-Franciscan order seemed to have an attitude that said: It’s good that we lose most guys during the formation process, cause most of them are nuts. Even if this was true, why tell a group of prospective candidates this?